contact us

Let's get in touch. Have a question or just simply want to say hi? Do not hesitate to contact us.

get started

Need a website done? Let's get started today. We will get back to you with a quote.

Let's get in touch

Have a question? Send your message and we will respond promptly.

Thank you!

Your request has been successfully delivered to our team, we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Error

Sorry, there has been an error with the message you sent. We will investigate this issue as soon as possible. If this error continues please contact us directly through support (at) nilead (dot) com.

Ready to get started?

Nilead provides high-end web design, development and management service.
Need a new website project done? Provide us with some initial information and our team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Can you tell us your requirements?

Tell us about your website project's ideas and requirements.

For example:
I need an img/video gallery to show my projects
I need a product listing section and a checkout system similar to abc.com website

Do you have any preferences?

Feel free to list a few websites you admire in general or for a specific design/feature. Provide specific URLs and description.

For example:
http://nilead.com - I like their blog layout

Thank you!

Your request has been successfully delivered to our team, we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Error

Sorry, there has been an error with the message you sent. We will investigate this issue as soon as possible. If this error continues please contact us directly through support (at) nilead (dot) com.

Optimize your Search Engine Result Page (SERP) snippet

Search Engine Result Page (SERP) are the result pages that contain the result of a search query.

sample search engine result page

Each result in this page is often called SERP snippet or SERP item. Search Engines uses the content from your website to generate the content of these snippets.

Search engine result page snippet has 3 main components

Note: search engines have custom algorithms to generate the snippets, the general rules to use title, description and link do not always apply.

As you can see in the example above our title is cut short and some of the words are not displayed. It's very important to take note of this, imagine if you use a very long title and the most important keywords are not displayed then you may not capture the users' immediate attention.

How does Google display the SERP text content?

Now that you know Google is truncating the text content displayed in the SERP snippet, it's important to understand how Google is doing that. The general accepted theory is that Google is truncating the text based on the pixel width (how wide the text is in pixel). While no one knows for sure, the currently accepted formula is:

The width of Google search results is about 600 pixels wide (this applies to title and link)

The character count of the description is about 150 characters (some sources argue that Google actually limits on pixel width which is around 920px for all lines combined)

It's extremely important to point out that Google dynamically change the content of the snippet to present the most user-centric preview (or at least they try to). Google may also dynamically change the title by highlighting keywords that are in the search query, truncating in the middle, or moving brand phrases to the start of a title, truncating much earlier than the 600px width on occasions.

How to optimize your SERP snippet for higher click-through rate?

Click-through rate is the percentage of people visiting a web page who access a hypertext link to a particular advertisement. It's easy to see how a more relevent, catchy SERP may capture more attention and encourage more users to visit the page. You can optimize the click-through rate by giving the targeted users top most attention:

Use concise title and description.

Use meaningful links (for example, yoursite.com/post/how-to-optimize-your-title is better than yoursite.com/post/123213131).

Ensure important keywords are not hidden/truncated.

Include important keywords you want to target in your title and description.

Take advantage of Nilead's SERP preview to optimize your content

Nilead's platform offers built-in SEO Analyzer which does include SERP snippet preview for your convenience. While it's important to take note that the generated SERP preview may not match 100% with the real SERP snippet from Google, it's a convenient way to quickly preview and check for potential issues.

about the author

Vu Nguyen

Vu Nguyen is an entrepreneur, a developer, and a founder of nilead.com. While his love is in the backend website development work, his experience covers eCommerce (being both a real online store owner and a developer), Search Engine Optimization, UX Design and Content Strategy.

Since 2005, Vu Nguyen has led and directed UX design, full-stack development teams on projects large and small for corporations, start-ups, individuals and more. He was involved in every task of each project, from idea to concept and vision, prototype, detailed design, build and deployment.